Preserving Our Surplus Tomatos

I'm growing Aviro and Sparta under glass & plastic and Gardeners Delight out of doors.
We're now at the stage that we have a glut every few days so are dehydrating them for use over winter.
Dehydration is a great way to preserve fruit and veg as when dried it takes up very little space and it's also a lot easier to do.
We've dried several kilos of stawberries this year and will use those over the winter in various ways and I'll soon make a start on drying some sweet peppers.

850 gm of fresh Aviro picked this morning at 9.00


9.30am sliced and in the dehyrating trays


6.00pm and ready to be packed into plastic bags for storage after having shed 90% of the original weight due to water loss

 

Where do you get the dehydrating trays from? Where do you store them once bagged? How would you use them once dried? I hope that isn't too many questions!

 

So are they on a heated tray Dave?
I dont know anything about this.

A bit like sundried without the sun, I suppose:D

 

I've always preferred peeling them and then making a type of puree in the blender and then freezing into suitable sized containers or bags.:thumb:

Peeling toms is easy after submerging in boiling water for a few minuets, or even minits, or miniuts or for a few seconds, heh,heh.

Mind you the way Dave does em, would be great stored in Virgin Olive Oil.

 

Looks very interesting to dry tomatoes. I have mostly made soup with
my excess tomatoes and stored in the freezer. I don't add too much liquid
before freezing - to save space - but put more in before using it.

Drying them looks good Dave - do tell us more about the trays.

 

When I was a little girl my Nanna used to dry in her tomatoes, pears etc in her cast iron oven-not an aga-one of those that had a fire next to it.

She used a flat iron frying pan.

You can keep them in paper bags out of the sun, or oil-but I wasn`t allowed to do the oil so don`t know how she did that.

I think a dry airing cupboard will do it too.

 

Oh gosh - a lot of questions.

Heated trays?
The trays sit above a fan blown heater with a thermostatic control. Different temperatures are use for different produce. Toms and most fruit, beans and peas are dried at 70C, herbs at 40C. We have three trays but could add more if we needed. It's a more economical use of power to wait until we have enough for two or three trays than to fill just one.

Peeling/soup/olive oil/sun dried?
We do make quite a bit of soup too from fresh and also use dried to make soup in winter. If you peel toms you lose a lot of the vitamin benefits. We've also pickled cherry toms and preserved fresh in oil - neither was a great success. Not tried popping dried ones into oil but will have ago. Dehydrating is just the same as sun dried, but without the flies:D

Drying v Freezing
Freezing destroys the cellular structure more than drying does. Dried produce will keep longer than frozen and you don't consume electricity (your freezer). Dehydrating is claimed to preserve flavour, mineral content and nutritional value better than freezing. (All you are getting rid of is H2O) Dried produce takes up very,very little space.

How do we use the stuff?
All sorts of ways. Toms go into soups, stews, sauces (bolognaise), bread mix. Strawberries are soaked and go into muesli, are cooked with apples (fresh or dried) and with rhubarb in early summer. Peas beans and leeks go into soups and stews. We dry herbs too.

Storing?
We put the produce into plastic bags, seal them and then store in plastic boxes. Some of the boxes are kept indoors and others out in our shed.

Photo shows the dehydrator (it's a Stockli), a bag of toms and one of the boxes we use.

 

Thanks for that Dave.
Perhaps I will have a go with a dehydrator - as you say dried stuff doesn't use
electricity to store. Another question - what is the longest time you have
stored your dried produce? i.e. do they have a use by date??
:thumb:

 

Woops!
Just googled Stockli Dehydrator - they are not cheap are they :eek:

but I am sure they earn their keep :D

 

I'd quite like one of those, I didn't know such a thing existed. Dried tomatoes are very expensive to buy and chutney takes an age to make.

 

jjordie - No not cheap, but given the amount of stuff we now dry and use, ours (which we bought last year will probably pay for itself in another couple of years, maybe less if you take into account the cost of our time that otherwise would have been spent on time-consuming freezing and the stuff we'd have chucked out because we didn't have time to freeze.
As far as regards storage times - we've still got apples. peas and beans from last autumn and toms from last summer and they have kept just fine. Just finished the dried leeks (end of the crop) we packed last Feb. I can't give definitive storage times as we've not been doing it for long enough, but I'd guess that one would get at least 18 months if the stuff was kept well sealed and away from moisture.

If anyone is thinking of buying one like ours, the extra few quid for the version with a timer is worth it. We've not got one, but wish we had spent the bit extra.

UJH - don't give up on the chutney. We still make a few jars as well as pickling cucumbers and onions.

BTW - that little bag of dried toms probably represents about 0.4kg of the fresh weight.
Dried apples are a great snack - the sugar is very concentrated and a little bag of them is just great for taking on walks.

 

Great thread...Dave !

 

Having just got back into veg gardening this year, my toms were a bit late going in. I'm still waiting for my greenhouse toms to ripen and as for my outdoor one's, well, one word pretty much sums it up...blight ! Methinks I might well go for something like this dehydrator, cos NEXT year I'm looking forward to a glut Cheers...freddy.

 

What an excellent and useful post.

So do you just dry them, bag them and store them in a dry place? How long do they store for?

I'll try that for sure as I buy them dried generally.

Thanks

 

See above biker, all the info you require has been provided.:thumb: